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9-29-2002

I am/was the Walrus

Daniel Beller-McKenna
University of New Hampshire, Daniel.Beller-McKenna@unh.edu

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This is an open access article published by Columbia University Press in Current Musicology in 2002, available online:
https://dx.doi.org/10.7916/cm.v0i74.4904

Recommended Citation
Beller-McKenna, D. “I am/was the Walrus.” Current Musicology 74 (2002): 47-68.

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I Am/Was the Walrus

By Daniel Beller-McKenna

I.
For most of his adult life, John Lennon fought to define himself against
his public identity as "Beatle-:John." That image, crafted by the Beatles'
manager Brian Epstein and the pop music industry became a burden to all
four of the Beatles during the group's seven years of international star-
dom. In place of the rough leather-clad rock and roll band that played
rambling one hour sets in the Hamburg Kaiserkeller and the Liverpool
Cavern Club during 1960-61, Epstein forged a more commercially viable
group of four well (and uniformly) dressed young men whose stage act
was reduced to twenty minute carefully scripted sets. Over the course of
the next few years, all four of the Beatles assumed clean-cut, safe personae
in accordance with the necessities of marketing the group to a broad,
middle-class audience. Willing though he and the others were to take part
in the group's public transfonnation, Lennon later claimed to have felt
uncomfortable all along with selling out the Beatles' rock and roll roots:
"What we generated was fantastic when we played straight rock, and there
was nobody to touch us in Britain. But as soon as we made it, the edges
were knocked off. Brian Epstein put us in suits and all that, and we made it
very, very big. We sold out" (Wenner 2000:20). Lennon's reflections are
born out by a contemporaneous witness, Paul McCartney's brother Michael,
who spent a great deal of time with the group during their Liverpool days:

The others didn't have John's resentment of having to do what he

was doing to be a Beatle ... They thought they were just bloody
lucky they were getting away with it for so long. But John always
had that drive, something ticking over, the need to do something
else. It was "Ah, so this is what we have to do to be bigger than
Elvis? Ok, let's go. But I'm not going to give one hundred percent
of me." (quoted in Coleman 1992:311)

Submitting to Epstein's plan forced Lennon (and all of the Beatles) to

Current Musicology. no. 74 (Fall 2002)

© 2004 by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York
48 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY

suppress aspects of both their public and private personae (gone, for in-
stance, were the days of Lennon performing with a toilet seat around his
neck and hurling expletives at his German audience). For Lennon, most
commentators then and now agree that his primary sacrifice was the rebel-
lious anger that drove him to achieve the very success Epstein offered.
(Epstein himself wrote of Lennon, "There is in the set of his head a con-
trolled aggression that demands respect" [Epstein 1964:21].) Lennon
chronicler john Wiener expands on this idea: '1ohn was a genuinely angry
young man. His anger may have been inchoate, expressed through the
stereotyped working class macho, but it was real. When he played the cheer-
ful wit, he had to repress a vital part of himself' (J. Wiener 1991:51). The
Beatles' famous wit was emblematic of the intellectual promise many heard
in their music and sensed in their demeanor. In one of the first social
critiques of the Beatles, for example, literary theorist Terry Eagleton ar-
gued in 1964 that the Beatles' middle-class mentality distinguished them
from their tougher pop music predecessors. The songs of a previous wave
of Elvis-spawned British rockers of the late fifties (Adam Faith, Cliff Rich-
ard, Marty Wilde, and Billy Fury) expressed a social bitterness engendered
in the singers' working-class backgrounds: "'I feel so blue, I don't know
why' ," writes Eagleton, "was the equivalent, at this level, of the intellectual's
inability to rationalize his angst. Aggression became a built-in reflex in the
pop song and the singer's technique" (1964: 175). Eagleton goes on to
argue that the Beatles represented a grammar school mentality in distinc-
tion to the "secondary-modern" world of their British rock precursors:

The real cultural shift which [the Beatles'] arrival effected was
not from London to Liverpool, but from secondary modern to
grammar school. One of the Beatles attended a Liverpool grammar
school and the College of Art Uohn Lennon]; two others attended
the Liverpool Institute [Paul McCartney and George Harrison],
and one of these got a pass at 'A' level English [McCartney].
(ibid.:176)1

Eagleton is biographically correct, as Lennon would be the first to admit. 2

But whatever the reality of their upbringings, as teenagers the Beatles had
thoroughly adopted rock and roll's rebellious stance. Their middle-class
intellectual fac;:ade, whether true to their roots or not, was not how the
four (least of all Lennon) saw themselves or wanted to be seen. Rather, it
represented a social background that Epstein was able to tap into as he
molded the group into a marketable commodity. As the Beatles' music
became ever more complex and self-consciously artistic through the mid-
1960s,john Lennon's intellectual cache grew ever stronger. This was, how-
 DANIEL BELLER- MCKENNA 49

ever, merely one part of the larger pop star persona that defined the Beatles
through the middle and late 1960s. Above all else, they were defined by
their friendy accessibility and approachable charm.
Upon Epstein's death in August 1967, Lennon effected a radical change
in his public persona, moving sharply away from the Epstein-inspired Beatles
image and depicting himself instead as a rebellious champion of various
counterculture political agendas. From the demise of the Beatles in 1970
on, Lennon sought to present himself as an unpackaged "real" person. At
first (in the years around 1970) this move towards recapturing his own
public persona manifested itself in a series of political stunts, aimed at
displaying his uncompromising expression of ideals, and such symbolic
acts of stripping away his previously false persona as appearing naked with
partner Yoko Ono on the album jacket of their Two Virgins LP (1968).
Beatles fans and the media either applauded his agitprop antics with Yoko
Ono towards the end of the decade as a responsible and necessary reac-
tion to the tenor of the times or criticized them as lavish, naive, and self-
absorbed attempts to use Lennon's pop star celebrity as a vehicle for ex-
pressing the couple's political views. In either case, Lennon had success-
fully shattered his "Beatle:John" self by the early 1970s, and presented in-
stead aJohn Lennon more in line with the rebellious youth Lennon had
suppressed to achieve stardom in the mid-1960s.
Lennon's death in 1980 only raised the stakes for those who saw him
as either the hero or the villain of the 1960s. Ironically, the debate over
Lennon since then has hinged on the discrepancies between his private
and public self, the very dichotomy Lennon had sought to destroy by pre-
senting himself as direct, truthful, and unpackaged. Take, for example,
the battle that raged over his legacy eight years after his murder. In 1988
Albert Goldman released his scathing biography, The Lives ofJohn Lennon,
in which he depicted Lennon as a drug-diminished "Nowhere Man" who
allowed those around him to manipulate his identity. Goldman had long
been a harsh critic of pop culture and its icons, having written equally
damning books on Lenny Bruce and Elvis Presley (1974, 1981), as well as
several articles criticizing various other rock stars or aspects of youth cul-
ture. His critique of Lennon, therefore, was itself widely criticized as part
of his ongoing assault on rock, and the mean-spiritedness towards Lennon
that permeated Goldman's book added credence to those critiques. In any
case, Goldman's depiction is largely a media-based fabrication. For whereas,
according to his own account, he and his research assistants conducted
around 1,200 interviews over six years, the first source he cites is the body
of published interviews with Lennon. He adds to this "available documents
in the national press of England, the United States, and Japan," as well as
previously published biographies (Goldman 1988:700). Goldman is either
50 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY

unable or unwilling to recognize his 'John Lennon" as a public media

figure, and his claim to portray his as the real John Lennon behind the
public image remains unconvincing.
Shortly after Goldman's book appeared, Lennon's widow Yoko Ono
initiated the film-and-book project Imagine, which buttressed the estab-
lished media image of Lennon as peaceful-revolutionary-turned-mellow-
family-man (Solt and Egan 1988; Solt 1989). Fred Fogo goes so far as to
label Imagine: john Lennon "an official counter document to The Lives of
john Lennon" (1994:122). Like Goldman's book, Ono's projection of her
late husband can be understood as an act of mass media manipulation.
Working from a wealth of privately held film and tape footage, Ono chose
to depict Lennon in the best possible light, and we can easily see her 'John
Lennon" as a self-consciously constructed fiction-one (very positive) in-
terpretation ofthe public figure who was John Lennon.
John Lennon had been very much aware of and actively concerned
with questions of public and private personae and their uncomfortable co-
existence during his life. Indeed, presenting himself as a real person (not
Beatle:John) became a theme in some of his later songs with the Beatles
and most of his early solo work. Given Lennon's continued centrality in
interpretations of 1960s pop and counter-culture, coming to a better
undertanding of his various self-portrayals will help to illuminate his role
in the culture of his times. This essay traces Lennon's attempt to dissociate
himself from his Beatles image between 1966 and 1970, the year of the
Beatles' breakup. I take as my terminal points two songs, "I am the Wal-
rus," written for the Beatles' 1967 film Magical Mystery Tour, and "God," the
final song on Lennon's premiere solo album in 1970, john Lennon/Plastic
Ono Band. The first song dismantles Lennon's Beatle-image by challeng-
ing the basic notion of identity, especially as the song is rendered visually
in the movie Magical Mystery Tour, while the second overtly rejects a litany
of established cultural icons including and culminating with the Beatles.
Lennon had begun to dismantle Beatle:John before writing "I am the Wal-
rus," and his public persona would continue to evolve beyond his first solo
album. Yet each of the two songs at hand recommends itself as a signifi-
cant juncture in that evolution. "I am the Walrus" marked the end (and
arguably the pinnacle) of Lennon's psychedelic musical explorations dur-
ing 1966-67, a phase in which the Beatles' traditional methods of compos-
ing were severely altered, thereby radically changing the group's musical
profile and popular perception. "God" ends a stark album of simple means
and (sometimes) violent expression in which Lennon attempts to thor-
oughly purge his Beatle-self. Near the end of that song Lennon claims "I
was the Walrus, but now I'mJohn." Lennon thereby completes a process
begun in 1967, entirely removing the walrus mask once and for all to os-
 DANIEL BELLER- MCKENNA 51

tensibly reveal his real and pure self: 'John." I will consider each song as
part of that process.

II.
At the beginning of 1966 there was little to suggest to the public that John
Lennon would have any need or desire to undo his Beatles identity. The
previous three years had witnessed the group's unprecedented rise in popu-
larity first in England and then worldwide. After six albums, eleven num-
ber-one singles, two successful movies, and numerous well-received tours,
maintaining the status quo would have seemed a reasonable strategy. Yet
the status quo was already in flux by the end of the previous year. Live
performances, the group's forte prior to Beatlemania, had become ex-
tremely difficult and unrewarding due to the ecstatic behavior (and noise)
of their audiences. As a result, the Beatles began experimenting in the
studio during mid-1965 with the use of a string quartet on the song ''Yester-
day," a flute on the album Help!, and later in the year with still more exotic
instruments on the album Rubber Soul: sitar, fuzz bass, and harmonium, as
well as unusual recording effects like the backwards guitar solo on "I'm
Only Sleeping" and backwards vocals on "Rain. "3
As their studio explorations intensified during the spring of 1966 on
the album Revolver, the Beatles' relationship with the public began to change
as wel1. 4 That summer, controversy surrounded the group for the first
time on the world tour that followed the recording of Revolver. After run-
ins with the press and dignitaries inJapan and the Philippines, the Beatles
suffered their greatest fall from grace to date over the "more popular than
Jesus Christ" flap that developed in the United States during July and Au-
gust. Several months earlier, in a February 1966 interview with Maureen
Cleave of the London Evening Standard, Lennon had remarked: "Christian-
ity will go, it will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that, I'm right
and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus Christ right now.
I don't know which will go first-rock and roll or Christianity. Jesus was
alright, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that
ruins it for me" (reprinted in the Beatles 2000:223). His remarks touched
off an uproar in the United States when they were reprinted in the July
1966 issue of the fan magazine Datebook. Before the Beatles arrived for a
tour in August, mass record burnings were held in several cities and thirty-
five radio stations banned their records (A. Wiener 1986:96; J. Wiener
1991: 11-16). By the time the summer tour ended on August 29th at Candle-
stick Park in San Francisco, the group had decided to cease touring.
Lennon's public reaction to the controversy over his Jesus remark is
noteworthy. When the Beatles first came to the U.S. in early 1964 amid the
onset of Beatlemania, their press conferences were famous for cheeky wit
52 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY

and brash irreverence, an earthy sincerity that won over the press and
helped secure their popular success in this country.5 Three years later,
however, at an August 11 press conference in Chicago near the end of the
Beatles' long summer tour, Lennon's tone was quite different:

I am sorry I opened my mouth. I just happened to be talking to a

friend and I used the word "Beatles" as a remote thing-"Beatles",
like other people see us. I said they are having more influence on
kids than anything else, includingJesus. I said it in that way, which
was the wrong way. I'm not anti-God, anti-Christ, or anti-religion. I
was not knocking it. I was not saying we are greater or better. I
think it's a bit silly. If they don't like us, why don't they just not buy
the records ....
When I first heard about the repercussions I thought "It can't
be true-it's just one of those things." And then when I realized it
was serious I was worried stiff because I knew how it would go on,
and the things that would get said about it, and all those miserable
pictures of me looking like a cynic, and it would go on and on and
on and get out of hand, and I couldn't control it. I can't answer
for it when it gets that big, because it's nothing to do with me
then. (reprinted in Beatles 2000:226)

Watching and listening to the excerpt of this press conference on the video
portion of The Beatles' Anthology project, the bitterness and frustration be-
hind Lennon's words are readily apparent.
Upon returning from the summer tour, Lennon immediately set off
for Germany (and Spain) to play Private Gripweed in the film How I Won
the War, directed by Richard Lester, who had also directed the Beatles' first
two films. Whereas Lennon had played his Beatle-self in A Hard Day's Night
(1964) and Help! (1965), in How I Won the War he portrayed a relatively
secondary and pathetic character in a dark parody of Hollywood war films.
Working on Lester's film, therefore, served two immediate purposes for
Lennon. First, the film carried a strong anti-war message that gave Lennon's
public aura the political slant it would maintain until the end of his life.
Secondly, it was a professional venture that allowed Lennon to work out-
side of the Beatles. 6 Indeed, from the fall of 1966 until the Beatles dis-
banded in 1970, much of Lennon's activity can be understood as an at-
tempt to escape his Beatle:John persona. And if the much discussed per-
sonal and artistic union he began with Yoko Ono in 1968 fostered Lennon's
most iconoclastic behavior, his political statements and activities in 1966
indicate that he was already well on his way to shedding his Beatle per-
sona.
 DANIEL BELLER-McKENNA 53

III.
All four Beatles had gone on separate vacations after the 1966 summer
tour. They reunited in EMI's Abbey Road studio on November 24 to begin
recording Lennon's "Strawberry Fields Forever," which he had written in
Spain while filming How I Won the War (Lewisohn 1988:87). In many ways
this song can be seen as the direct precursor to "I am the Walrus," which
they would begin recording about nine months later. Between those re-
cordings the Beatles noticeably changed their public image (visually as
well as figuratively) and their musical style. Generally, the group no longer
appeared in public wearing matching clothes and haircuts (excepting of
course, the Victorian military-band attire of Sgt. Pepper, which was itself a
self-conscious identity transformation device). Musically, the decision to
stop touring led to a freedom to expand the studio experiments begun in
early 1966, and the soundscape of Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour is
defined by a nearly complete freedom from producing songs that could be
replicated on stage.
"Strawberry Fields" and "I am the Walrus" exemplity this freedom, and
the two songs are frequently compared for their use of orchestral instru-
mental overlay and complicated tape-mixing effects. 7 More importantly
for present purposes, "I am the Walrus" carries further themes of identity
dissociation that had surfaced in "Strawberry Fields" which, like its later
counterpart, comprises ajumbled collage of images and psychological ref-
erences. Questions of identity emerge haphazardly throughout "Strawberry
Fields Forever"; such phrases as "It's getting hard to be someone," and
"Always, no, sometimes, think it's me" are the most obvious cases. Here,
for the first time in his songwriting, Lennon raises the issue of identity in a
self-conscious fashion.
Between "Strawberry Fields" and the recording of "I am the Walrus" in
September 1967, two decisive events changed Lennon's (and perhaps his
bandmates') attitude toward his participation in the Beatles. In August
their manager Brian Epstein died of a drug overdose, just as the group
began their brief but intense association with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and
his Spiritual Regeneration movement. Epstein had met and begun manag-
ing the group in late 1961, and had been singly responsible for transform-
ing the group's rough and rebellious image into the cleaner, less threaten-
ing, and more marketable "Mop-Top" package by which they achieved their
initial fame and fortune. s Although Epstein's absence left the group rela-
tively rudderless as a business concern and entertainment act, it conversely
allowed any lasting creative fetters on the four members to fall away. Bear-
ing witness to the bonuses and pitfalls of such freedom are the Beatles'
next two projects, the film Magical Mystery Tour and the double album The
Beatle> (the "White" album). The film, produced and directed by the Beatles
54 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY

Example 1: "I am the Walrus"; opening melody of verse 1.

A A/G c D DIE A A/G

I am he as you are he as you are we and we are all to- ge ther, _

c D A

see how they run like pigs from a gun see how _ they run_ I'm cry - iog._

themselves, aired the day after Christmas 1967 in the U. K Shown in black
and white, many of its colorful effects fell flat. Moreover, the amateurish
writing, directing, and composition were panned by the British press, mark-
ing the Beatles' first public failure. The White Album, while more sympa-
thetically received, also contained numerous songs that have never been
embraced by one or another contingent of Beatles fans: from the avant-
garde tape compilation "Revolution #9" to the treadey-sweet "Honey Pie"
and "Ob-Ia-di, ob-Ia-da," to cite two extremes. In any case, these efforts
(the film and the extremes of the White Album-including its length)
would not likely have taken the shape they did had they occurred under
Epstein's management of the group.
By the fall of 1967, then, the Beatles were well on their way towards
obliterating their earlier "Fab Four" identity, and "I am the Walrus" illus-
trates clearly that Lennon was at the front of the line. Lennon immedi-
ately announces the theme of identity-dissipation in the opening line of "I
am the Walrus": "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all to-
gether" (0:21-0:28). Not only do these personal equations dissolve the
distinct identity of all members (I, he, you, me, we), but the sonic equiva-
lence of he-me-we (mono-syllabic two letter words ending on a long -e
vowel) projects an aural sameness as well. Just two notes-an undulating
semi-tone, E-D#--form the sparse melody here (ex. 1). Such a tense, static
delivery of the lyrics throws the identity relationships in the song's text
into strong relief against the shifting harmonies below. Those harmonies
seem to be unable to help direct the melody beyond its remarkably narrow
 DANIEL BELLER-McKENNA 55
Example 2: "1 am the Walrus": refrain.

B c D E

I am the egg man they are the egg-men I am the wal-rus goo-goo- g':..joob

range, as if the melody resists being pulled into any recognizable pop con-
tour just as strongly as the lyrics defy a strict identity association. Even
when the chords C and D are lengthened in the next strain ("See how they
run like pigs from a gun") to one chord per-bar, the melody clings to the
E-D# dyad. And no matter how the pacing of the chords is altered in the
ensuing strains (0:38-0:54), little changes melodically; the unremitting semi-
tone alternation in the melody is relieved only by the falling cadential
figures on the words "together," "how they fly," and "crying" and by its
transposition to the pitches A and B and its slight expansion (now a whole
tone apart) at the line "Corporation tee-shirt, stupid bloody Tuesday" (etc.,
in subsequent verses).
"Detachment" best describes the relationship between the terse melody
and the chord changes that accompany it;just as the ego in the song defies
identification, the vocal line refuses to take melodic shape around the
song's underlying harmonies. It is as if the multiple I-he-you-me-we per-
sona refuses to form into a recognizable, distinctive melody and thus com-
mit to one or another of its constituent parts. Perhaps the only strongly
directed melody occurs in the refrain ("I am the eggman ... "), where the
voice follows major chords up diatonically from B to E (0:54-1 :03, ex. 2).
Again we are confronted with an identity jumble: "I am the eggman / they
are the eggmen / ... " As the melody rises we anticipate some sort of
textual conclusion or resolution, but are left instead with the song's enig-
matic title statement: "I am the Walrus."
The song's structure does not give any clearer sense of where it is
headed. Like many Lennon songs from 1967-68, "I am the Walrus" dwells
on descending (and also in this case ascending) bass lines and chord pro-
gressions. 9 Yet unlike some more clearly directed examples, these linear
patterns in "I am the Walrus" occur only after false starts and/ or abrupt
changes in direction, producing a formal sense of randomness to match
the disjointed images and identity scramble of the text. For example, the
descent begun with A to G in the bass under the words "I am he as you are
56 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY

he" is twice interrupted by the upwards progression C-D, first in the space
of one bar (" ... you are me and we are all together") and later across two
full bars ("see how they run ... "). Amore complete descentfromAis only
realized in the second half of the verse at the words "Sitting on a cornflake,"
where the bass descends A-G-F#-F over the chords A~- ~ D~ -F (0:39-
0:49). When that F major chord gives way to B major, the resulting ascent
from B up to E not only incorporates the C-D progression from the first
half of the verse, but also provides a context in which to make tonal sense
of the song's opening instrumental descent from B-E (now reversed), which
recurs as a bridge after verse two, now with words added ("Sitting in an
English garden waiting for the sun"; 2:10-2:24). In essence then, the song
rests on a linear descent in the bass from A to E and a linear ascent (also a
chord progression) from B to E, which also appears inverted in the bridge,
and extended in the introduction. But Lennon breaks down and scrambles
these progressions, thereby obscuring any tight formal scheme to the song.
Some frequently repeated stories about how Lennon wrote the song
might shed light on the meaning (or lack thereof) of the song's structure
and its title. At one point, Lennon claimed he had originally wanted to
write an entire song on an ambulance siren sound. The opening electric
piano riff embodies his original inspiration (F#-D# alternating with B), and
the vocal dyads, therefore, represent an edgy and strained variation of the
introduction. 1o As for the genesis of the text, two separate (though not
mutually exclusive) accounts have been given. Lennon himself commented
that "The first line was written on one acid trip one weekend. The second
line was written on the next acid trip the next weekend, and it was filled in
after I metYoko" (Golson 1981:156) Lennon's old Liverpool friend Pete
Shotton recalls that Lennon made up the mostly non-sequitous lyrics to
the song upon hearing that a literature class at their old high school was
analyzing Beatles songs. Such bizarre concepts as "Semolina pilchard climb-
ing up the Eiffel Tower" were Lennon's attempt to confound and thwart
those who would try to make sense of his lyrics (especially the masters at
his old school) (Shotten 1983:216-17). Finally, Lennon traced the general
dream-like quality ofthe song's imagery to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonder-
land (Carroll was a favorite author and one who frequently inspired
Lennon's literary efforts). In particular, Lennon's song draws on the story
of "The Walrus and the Carpenter" from chapter 4 of Through the Looking
Glass ("Tweedledum and Tweedledee"). The latter reference might ex-
plain the repeated refrain ''I'm crying" that frequently halts the verses of
"I am the Walrus," since in the story it is the Walrus who repeatedly weeps
for the young oysters whom he and the carpenter have tricked into com-
ing to dinner (only to eat them). In light of the role identity plays in "I am
the Walrus," Lennon's attraction to Alice may not have been inconsequen-
 DANIEL BELLER-McKENNA 57

tial, given her own malleable form and size. Even within the vignette he
chose, Lennon himself seemed to have been confused with the identity of
the characters:

I was the walrus, whatever that means. We saw the movie in L.A.
and the walrus was a big capitalist that ate all the fuckin' oysters
[laugh], if you must know ... I always had this image of "The
Walrus and the Carpenter"-and I never checked what the walrus
was. I've been going around and saying "I am the walrus," that it's
something, but he's a fucking bastard [laugh] ... The way it's
written everbody presumes that it means something. I mean even
I did, so we just presumed, just cause I said, "I am the walrus" that
it must mean that I am God or something, but its just poetry. But
it became symbolic with me. (Wenner 2000:88) 11

In addition to exchanging the identity of the characters in the story, here

Lennon suggests that the walrus and the concept of God are somehow
related to him, a connection that will be played out obliquely in the song
"God" from his first album (which had been released shortly before he
made the previous comment). I will return to the latter song below.
Whereas the Carroll inspiration accounts for the title of the song, all
four elements in these accounts of the song's genesis (the siren, the first
line written separately, the attempt to confuse his old school masters, and
the Lewis Carroll inspiration) resonate with the feeling of detachment
that exists between the song's siren-like melody and its chord changes.
Two parts of this account also confirm that Lennon was concerned with an
identity-distortion project in "I am the Walrus." To begin with, the isola-
tion on the first line, as written separately from (literally a week before)
any other text in the song suggests that the identity dissolution it expresses
(I-he-you-he-you-me-we) formed the seminal idea for the song. Secondly,
Shotton's story about fooling the masters at their old school directly raises
Lennon's frustration with how other's perceived his public self while also
vividly depicting his efforts to escape from his Beatle image, ducking out
from under the disguise, as it were.
I use the image of a disguise here because it pertains to the visual
image of "I am the Walrus" that the Beatles created for their movie Magical
Mystery Tour. The made-for-television film was a quasi-surreal, plotless romp
across the English countryside, containing five "music videos" (to use the
somewhat later term and idea), not including the title song, which was
played to the cinematic introduction and closing credits. Of these, only "I
am the Walrus" makes any attempt to depict an actual "performance" of
the song by the Beatles as a rock group (that is, in stage position, playing
58 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY

their instruments, lip-syncing the words, etc.) That, however, is as far as

the realistic depiction goes. Throughout the "I am the Walrus" video, the
members of the group don a variety of costumes and guises. They are shot
from a number of camera angles with various effects, and their stage set
stance is interlaced with shots of them standing in a variety of poses: with
interlocked arms on each others' backs; swaying to the song with fingers
snapping as if coolly detached from the performing Beatles; directing the
cameramen; etc. As the group performs, several images from the song's
lyrics are realized visually: the "policemen in a row," the "eggmen" (and
perhaps Lennon, who wears a white skullcap, as the "Eggman"), and the
"Walrus" (again, Lennon), as one animal costume among four that the
group members wear.
Putting on masks and costumes is a central theme in Magical Mystery
Tour. Although the film was critically trashed, it gives a much better idea of
how the group thought and where their interests lay at the time than did
either of their previous, commercially successful films with Richard Lester.
Lennon later remarked of A Hard Day's Night. "We were a bit infuriated
with the glibness and shiftiness of the dialogue [,] and we were always try-
ing to get it a bit more realistic, but they wouldn't have it." He added that
in Help! the Beatles felt like extras in their own film (Wenner 2000:56).
Bob Neaverson, whose book The Beatles Movies provides a thorough account
of how the group's film efforts fit into their musical development as well as
film trends of the 1960s, considers in detail how the Beatles played with
their identity in Magical Mystery Tour:

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the Beatles' image in Magical

Mystery Tour is that it broke with their previous tradition of
appearing in films as "themselves", and attempted to scramble any
sense of identificatory perception by mixing footage of dramatic
action in which they appear as actors who play characters within a
dramatic context, sequences where they appear as themselves in a
dramatic or performance-based context, and sequences where the
distinction is unclear ...
Moreover, when the group do [sic] appear as "themselves"
(either within the dramatic context or when "performing" songs),
their image marks a total departure from the imposed boyishness
and cheeky conformity of their previous cinematic excursions.
(Neaverson 1997:48)

Following the filmjust beyond the video of "I am the Walrus," one sees a
scene on the bus with Lennon and the little girl (named Nicole), which
exemplifies Neaverson's point. In "I am the Walrus" Lennon is Beatle:John
 DANIEL BELLER- MCKENNA 59

the performer, nonchalant Beatlejohn swaying and snapping his fingers

with his bandmates, John Lennon helping to choreograph and direct the
film's various sequences in the interpolated outtakes, the eggman, and, of
course, the Walrus. On the bus, however, he presents himself as John
Lennon, the "real" person, sharing a laugh with a small child, playing the
children's rhyme-game "Five Little Dickie Birds," and blowing up a bal-
loon, while his friend "the real" George Harrison sits by. These representa-
tions (of Lennon and Harrison) are, of course, strongly filtered; they are
also staged scenes intended to portray particular versions of the two Beatles'
personae. Yet their stark distinction from the surrealistically portrayed char-
acters of the preceding music video and the everyday nature of their play-
ful banter with Nicole clearly is intended to mark these as more genuine
characters than their alter-Beatle-egos. Whether or not we accept this
Lennon and Harrison as "real" is less important than the fact that we un-
derstand them to be intended as such.
As the song fades out in the movie, the walrus, the three other ani-
mals, the eggmen, the policemen, and a shutterbug midget dance into the
distance behind the bus. This provides a fitting visual metaphor for the
breakdown of identity that occurs in "I am the Walrus" and for the musical
structure of the song's fade-out. The fantastical characters behind the bus
are part of the show. Happily oblivious, they trail the "real" people on the
bus, dancing and singing into eternity (if you will), while the "real" people
get on with their journey. Lennon's homey little scene with Nicole into
which the audio of "I am the Walrus" fades aims to make the stark differ-
ence between characters of the song and the "real" John Lennon abun-
dantly clear.
Immediately preceding that scene, the visual imagery that accompa-
nies the musical fade-out of "I am the Walrus" directs the viewer to see the
John Lennon depicted on the bus as a separate entity from the various
John Lennons encountered in the song's video. Musically, the song ends
over a repeated wedge pattern, as a cycle of diatonically descending major
chords and bass line (from A back to A) is countered by a diatonically
rising line in the violins, also from-and-to A (ex. 3). All of this extends into
perpetuity the generic descending and ascending linear progressions on
which the song is based, now pitted directly against each other. Whereas
many pop songs end in a fade-out, this one seems to imply something
endless and irreversible through that gesture. The two contrary lines are
headed in different directions; the fade-out implies that they cannot be
reconciled. Identity is not meshed in this song, but rather it is divided and
blown apart. Beatlejohn, the walrus, and John Lennon must all go their
separate ways from now on.
Against that closing pattern, Lennon's nonsense syllables 'Juba,juba"
60 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY

Example 3: "I am the Walrus": closing 'wedge' theme. (Harmonies on the middle staff are
a generalized representation of the accompanying chords, not a literal notation of what
any particular instrument is playing.)

Violins

Cellos

are joined by a cacophony of chanted phrases and miscellaneous excerpts

from a performance of Shakespeare's King Lear, which happened to be
aired on the BBC on the night Lennon re-mixed the recording of the
song. Just as the musical wedge provides an abstraction of the elements
that made up the song, the accompanying textual mayhem is only a more
extreme version of the senseless lyrics of the song. Whatever meaning might
have been gleaned from the text in the rest of the song disappears into a
surrealistic jumble at its end. And with it disappears BeatleJohn, allowing
the "real" John Lennon (on the bus that is) to ride off without the media
circus that trails behind.

IV.
Lennon treated the Walrus as a mask. Once behind this disguise (a more
enigmatic and fully concealing artifice than that offered by the Sgt. Pep-
per garb from earlier in 1967) Lennon could slip away unnoticed from his
previous Beatle image. Thus when he sings a year later (almost to the day)
in the song "Glass Onion" on the White Album, "Well here's another clue
for you all, the Walrus was Paul," he is yet again confounding those who
would try to unravel the supposed hidden meaning of his songs. It is clear
 DANIEL BELLER-McKENNA 61

enough from the video in Magical Mystery Tour that the Walrus is Lennon.
His statement here, then, is one of affinity with McCartney, or another
manifestation of the fluid sense of identity suggested by the opening line
of "I am the Walrus (or, as Lennon later claimed, a knock at all those
Beatles fans who read too much into the group's songs).12
During 1968-69, the Beatles' last two years of recording, Lennon be-
gan to peer out from behind that mask. Many of the songs on the White
Album, Let it Be, and Abbey Road hint at the stark realism of the 1970 album
John Lennon/Plastic Dna Band, his first solo studio project. Songs like ''Yer
Blues," "I'm So Tired," "Don't Let Me Down," and "I Want You-She's So
Heavy," all carry a hint ofthe autobiographical and directly personal style
that would strongly color Lennon's solo efforts.13 Moreover, each of these
songs uses a scaled-back rock band scoring in contrast to the various tape
effects and orchestration of "Strawberry Fields Forever," "I am the Wal-
rus," "Glass Onion," and some other Lennon songs (not to mention many
of McCartney's efforts) on these later Beatles LPs.
First, however, according to Lennon, he went through a Christ-like
ego resurrection, centered on his use of LSD. When asked in his 1971
Rolling Stone interview whether he had ever had any bad trips, Lennon
explains:

Oh yeah, 1 had many. Jesus Christ. 1 stopped taking it cause of

that. 1 mean Ijust ... couldn't stand it. 1 dropped it for 1 don't
know how long. Then 1 started taking it just before 1 met Yoko. 1
got a message on acid that you should destroy your ego, and 1 did.
1 was reading that stupid book of Leary's and all that shit ... And
1 destroyed myself. 1 was slowly putting meself together after
Maharishi, bit by bit over a two year period. And then 1 destroyed
me ego and 1 didn't believe 1 could do anything. 1 let Paul do what
he wanted and say, them all do just what they wanted. And 1just
was nothing, 1 was shit. And then Derek [Taylor] tripped me out
at his house after he'd got back from L.A. He said, ''You're alright."
And he pointed out which songs I'd written and said, ''You wrote
this, and you said this, and you are intelligent, don't be frightened."
The next week 1 went down with Yoko and we tripped out again,
and she freed me completely, to realize that 1was me and it's alright.
And that was it. 1 started fighting again and being a loud-mouth
again and saying, "Well, 1 can do this," and "Fuck you, and this is
what 1 want," and "Don't put me down. 1 did this." So that's where
1 am now. (Wenner 2000:53-54)

This re-emergence of Lennon's assertive side was at least partly exhibited

62 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY

by a series of avant-garde recordings made by Lennon and Ono that were

released between 1969 and 1970, which moved completely outside the realm
of pop music. A series of tape collage pieces were released as four unbro-
ken sides on two separate albums entitled Two Virgins (1968) and Life with
the Lions (1969). Although most people were probably more aware ofthe
hue and cry over the full frontal nudity on the cover of Two Virgins (where
the naked Lennon and Ono posed holding hands) than ever actually heard
either of the albums, these releases and the couple's highly publicized
bed-ins and other off-beat demonstration gimmicks unmistakably signaled
Lennon's departure from the Beatles as a purposeful public phenomenon.
Lennon had recreated his public persona as a peace movement artistic
radical, an image that could never be reconciled with his Beatles pre-Sgt.
Pepper identity.
Despite these more roughly presented songs and iconoclastic projects
with Ono, little could have prepared Lennon's listening public for the
bleakness of his first conventional solo studio album, John Lennon/Plastic
Dna Band, released in December 1970. This is an album that pares away
any aural opulence in favor of sparse arrangements, largely unfiltered in-
strumental sounds, and a plain, often anguished vocal quality in Lennon's
mostly unharmonized voice. Most of the songs on Plastic Dna Band were
written in Los Angeles during Lennon's primal scream sessions with psy-
chologist Arthur Janov and recorded shortly thereafter. 14 Janov's method
aimed at liberating one's feelings from the painful realization that our
parents do not really love us for who we are. John Lennon had been aban-
doned in turn by each of his parents; his father Freddie Lennon left the
family shortly after John was born, and his mother Julia Lennon left John
as a small child to the care of her sister and brother-in-law, Mimi and George
Smith. What's worse, in 1958, after seventeen-year-old John had established
a mature and friendly relationship with her, Julia Lennon was run over by
a car and killed.
There was still more inJanov's published theories with which Lennon
could relate. In particular, Janov wrote that LSD stimulated intense real
feelings," but that it also produced "a wild flight of ideas ... that is also a
race away from feeling." And heroin (to which Lennon had graduated
during the late 1960s) completely deadened feelings. Primal scream
therapy, Janov argued allowed one to come to terms with their feelings
and, more importantly, to recognize their pain. "Feeling," Janov wrote, "is
the antithesis of Pain. The more pain one feels, the less pain one suffers"
(1970:99; quoted in]. Wiener 1991:136).
Pain has a very real presence on Plastic Dna Band, nowhere moreso
than in the opening song, "Mother." A series of death knell-like bells pre-
cedes the song in which Lennon sings a plain and simple melody against a
 DANIEL BELLER- MCKENNA 63

barely existent accompaniment from his sparse ensemble: a bass guitar

and drum along with Lennon's piano. Pain becomes visceral at the end of
the song as Lennon gives us a brief glimmer of what his primal scream
sessions probably sounded like.
Only a few other moments on the album match this intensity (the end
of "I Found Out," for example). But the theme of honest and direct con-
frontation with one's demons is a constant thread across the entire album.
At the end of Plastic Dno Band, Lennon begins the last full song, "God,"
with the words "God is a concept by which we measure our pain." Lennon's
cryptic remark is likely connected to the primal scream therapy he was
undergoing at the time. "God," for Lennon, had long been a "concept," as
witnessed in his remarks at the 1966 Chicago press conference quoted
above. Having long known what he did not believe in, Lennon seems to
have been in search of something believable in order to fill the ego-void
that had been created by his loss of self to Beatlemania, his subsequent
campaign to eradicate Beatle:fohn, and his drug use through the late 1960s.
Lennon's concept of God might reflect the comfort people take in the
divinity figure as a way to compensate for suffering pain.
Lennon sets the opening lines of the song to a highly conventional
rock and roll chord pattern, I-vi-IV-V, with an ensemble and a piano ar-
ticulation that evoke a gospel blues sound, as if he is preaching to us. As a
parody, this song is unique on Plastic Dno Band. During the Beatles' last
few years, Lennon had occasionally followed Paul McCartney's penchant
for parodistic styles, as in Lennon's doo-wop tinged closing section to "Hap-
piness is a Warm Gun" or the rockabilly sound of "The Ballad ofJohn and
Yoko." Plastic Dno Band, however, was practically dedicated to a revival of
pure rock, and the throwback style of "God" sounds conspicuously familiar
and thereby evocative.
The preachy quality of the song's opening verse is partly conveyed by
the ensemble, especially Billy Preston's gospel-like piano chords. Lennon's
vocal delivery also suggests a confessional, even evangelical atmosphere,
as in the exclamatory interjection "I'll say it again" (0:34) and the closing
"yeahs" (over a plagal C major [IV] chord, no less; 0:53-0:57). But any
religious reference in the sound is merely a set up for the bridge. That
long middle portion of the song (1 :02-2:52) comprises a descending vi-
V-IV ostinato in which Lennon delivers a litany of all the things he doesn't
believe in, culminating in the Beatles.

1 Ching
Bible
tarot
Hitler
64 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY

Jesus
Kennedy
Buddah
mantra
gita
yoga
kings
Elvis
Zimmerman
Beatles

By setting this laundry list of false idols to a brief, incessantly repeated

musical figure, Lennon evokes a chant-like spiritual mantra-indeed, "man-
tra" is one ofthe items further down the list. The bridge, then, works as a
credo (an anti-credo, really) by accessing a religious aural image that in-
vites us to hear each element as some sacred object. Lennon's reversal
through the phrase "I don't believe" is rendered that much stronger by
the religious association.
Many items on the list form small groups or progressions of related
ideas. For example, by beginning with "magic" and "I Ching," two con-
cepts that clearly lie outside of faith according to the Judeo-Christian cul-
ture in which he lived, Lennon is able to relativize and thereby cut down
the Bible, embedding it within a group that also contains tarot, a less lofty
form of mystical prophesying. Similarly, the presence of Hitler amidstJesus,
Kennedy, and Buddha taints them all by associating the latter three icons
with a cultic figure widely held to be the Western embodiment of evil. The
quasi-spiritual group that follows, "mantra, gita, yoga," all Eastern-based
fads of the 1960s, prepares for the final group in which a series of 1960s
pop idols are renounced. "Kings" seems entirely generic, but may obliquely
draw on the name of Martin Luther King, who had been murdered only
two years earlier. More importantly, however, "kings" alludes to the 1960s
pop status of the next three figures: Elvis (who was known as "The King"),
Zimmerman (Bob Dylan's real last name), and finally the Beatles. As he
approaches the latter word, Lennon's voice becomes suddenly more
present, both louder and lacking the studio echo that had been applied
through the preceding portion of the song. At the word "Beatles," the
music comes to a complete stop. Thereafter the song returns to its earlier
chord changes and Lennon's voice temporarily remains in its dry,
unenhanced state as he announced his creed: "I just believe in me, Yoko
and me."15
Lennon had much to say about the genesis of this song in his 1971
Rolling Stone interview. Specifically explaining the litany of the bridge, he
 DANIEL BELLER-McKENNA 65

says:

Well, like a lot of words, they just came out of me mouth. It started
off like that. "God" was stuck together from three songs almost. 1
had the idea, "God is the concept by which we measure our pain."
So when you have a [phrase] like that, you just sit down and sing
the first tune that comes into your head. And the tune is the simple
[sings] "God is the concept-bomp-bomp-bomp-bomp" cause 1 like
that kind of music. And then Ijust rolled into it. [Sings] "I don't
believe in magic"-and it was just going on in me head. And "I
Ching" and "the Bible," the first three or four just came out,
whatever came out. (Wenner 2000:10-11)

As for the Beatles' place at the end of the list, Lennon said:

1 was going to leave a gap and say, just fill in your own, for whoever
you don't believe in ... But Beatles was the final thing because it's
like 1 no longer believe in myth, and Beatles is another myth. 1
don't believe in it. The dream's over. I'm not just talking about
the Beatles is over, I'm talking about the generation thing. The
Dream's over, and 1 have personally got to get down to so-called
reality. (ibid.:11)

Having torn down the false gods of religion and of the sixties, he returns
to the earlier, 1950s-tinged music of the verse to close off the anti-credo
and initiate the end of the song. Gone, however, is the preachy tone of the
opening verse; the Beatles, Lennon implies, were just another false reli-
gion, a matter of faith. Without them (which is where we stand at the end
of the song and the end of the album), there is no pulpit left from which
to preach. Nevertheless, he maintains the religiously loaded musical parody
and textual imagery at the end of the song, but merely as an ironic ges-
ture-ironic because he effects a series of what might be called inverse-
religious transformations. He is "reborn," but as the earthyJohn, no longer
the dream weaver, and no longer the Walrus. We are left to "carry on," like
zealots without their messiah, perhaps like the strange cohorts of the Wal-
rus who were left following the bus in Magical Mystery Tour. Lennon be-
lieves only in himself and Yoko Qno. Such a strong focus on individuals is
a direct affront to the greatest legacy of the Beatles: the myth of the group
persona. Jon Wiener writes:

"God" rejects political, religious, and cultural false consciousness.

John undertakes a deliberate shattering of the illusions of the
66 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY

sixties, starting with the dream of the Beatles as the representation

of a genuine community, a harmonious group of equals, filled with
creative energy. This is a false dream,John says, and it is finished
now. He can't and won't serve as our god any more; he declares
that he is a person, like we are-he's just 'John." For us to carry
on, we need to find a way to shatter these gods outside of us, to
transfer power from our mythical heroes to ourselves, to each other.
(Wiener 1991:6)

Lennon had long been "transferring power" from one identity to another:
from the apolitical Beatle:J ohn to the anti-war character of Sgt. Gripweed,
and from the mop-top Beatle:John to the psychedelic Walrus of the song
and the movie Magical Mystery Tour. Transferring power from "mythical
heroes" to oneself was a natural step for Lennon in the year of the Beatles'
breakup.
Lennon's message at the end of "God" became central to his public
comments during the 1970s. He repeatedly exhorted his listening public
not to follow him, but rather to lead themselves, to make their own deci-
sions. Although "I am the Walrus" may have blended stylistically into
Lennon's psychedelic experiments around 1967, it occurs in retrospect to
have been a beginning of his active efforts to get out of the Beatles. And it
even presaged the religious connotations of "God" (or anti-religious, if
you prefer). Revelatory scriptures and mystical ceremonies frequently
employ masks, indecipherable prophecy, and wondrous vestments. If "I
am the Walrus" involved the donning of these trappings as a prelude to
revelation, "God" provides the apocalypse-only it reveals a sober and
earthly message, that we are all individuals after all, and that our "Gods"
are mere mortals.
A few months after recording Plastic Ono Band, Lennon was busy work-
ing on the song and album Imagine, in which many of the 1960s ideals
would be resurrected in his music. Within the next two years he would
embrace a series of radical political causes, all of which emphasized the
legacy of the 1960s. His message in the song "God" then, must be under-
stood in the context of the Beatles and his ongoing disengagement from
the band after 1966. By naming the Walrus as the last mask to be removed,
the last idol to be set aside, he points back to the critical role "I am the
Walrus" had played in starting the process of dissociation from his Beatles-
image.

Notes
1. The British secondary-modern school is rougly the equivalent of the Ameri-
can technical high school.
 DANIEL BELLER-McKENNA 67
2. In an interview for Playboy magazine in the fall of 1980, shortly before his
death, Lennon remarked: "My childhood was not all suffering. It was not all slum.
I was always well dressed, well fed, well schooled, and brought up to be a nice
lower-middle-class English boy. You know? And that's what made the Beatles dif-
ferent, the fact that George, Paul, and John were grammar school boys. Up till
then [sic], all rock-and-rollers basically had been black and poor, rural South or
whatever, city slums. And the whites had been truckers like Elvis ... But the so-
called thing of the Beatles was the fact that we were pretty well educated and not
truckers" (Golson 1981:138).
3. Of course the Beatles' use of drugs also increased during these years, be-
ginning with marijuana in 1965 and moving on to LSD in 1966.
4. On the Beatles' recording of Revolver; see Lewisohn (1988:70-84).
5. The Beatles' friendly rapport with the U.S. press is witnessed most famously
in the press conference held upon their arrival at New York's Kennedy Interna-
tional Airport on February 7, 1964. Film of this event can be seen in the video
Imagine:John Lennon (Solt 1989) and in The Beatles Anthology video recording, part
2.
6. For a cogent discussion of the political import of Lennon's involvement in
How I Won the War, see Wiener (1991:25-32).
7. Charts of both songs may be found in The Beatles Complete Scores (Beatles
1993).
8. Epstein visited a lunchtime performance by the Beatles on November 9,
1961, and began managing the group shortly thereafter.
9. Other Lennon songs featuring descending bass lines are "Lucy in the Sky
with Diamonds," "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite," "A Day in the Life," "Dear
Prudence," "Cry Baby Cry" (in the bridge), and "All You Need is Love."
10. In a November 23, 1968, interview with Jonathan Cott for Rolling Stone,
Lennon stated: "I had this idea of doing a song that was a police siren, but it didn't
work in the end: ... 'I-am-he-as-you-are-he-as ... ' You couldn't really sing the
police siren." Reprinted in Cott and Doudna (1982:51).
11. Later, in the 1980 Playboy interviews, Lennon added: "I never went into
that bit about what [Carroll] really meant, like people are doing with the Beatles'
work. Later I went back and looked at it and realized that the walrus was the bad
guy in the story and the carpenter was the good guy. I thought, Oh shit, I picked
the wrong guy. I should have said, 'I am the carpenter'. But that wouldn't have
been the same, would it?" (Wenner 2000:156).
12. On the recording of "Glass Onion," see Lewisohn (1988:155).
13. In 1971, Lennon remarked: "I didn't sit down to think, 'I'm going to write
about this, that or the other.' They all came out, like all the best work of anybody's
ever does. All this came out because I had the time. If you're on holiday or in
therapy and you spend the time-like in India, where I could write a lot, I wrote
the last bunch of my best songs. 'I'm so Tired,' and 'Yer Blues' were pretty sort of
realistic. They were about me[.]" (Wenner 2000: 12).
14. Janov's ideas and Lennon's encounter with them are described by Jon
Weiner (1991:136-38) and Ray Coleman (1992:513-16).
15. Lennon need not have focused such attention on the Beatles at this point
in the song, as illustrated in an earlier version of the song released on the 1998
68 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY

John Lennon Anthology. On that recording, the vi-V-IV ostinato continues right
through the lines "I just believe in me / Yoko and me / and that's reality,"
deemphasizing the final position of"Beatles" in Lennon's litany of dis-belief. Thus,
whereas the Beatles may not have loomed as large in one earlier concept of "God,"
the decision to contrast them as part of a lost dream as against the reality of Lennon's
self-identity (and his identification with Ono) in 1970 was apparently a carefully
calculated and self-conscious decision by Lennon.

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